F1 Fanatic round-up

Keith’s heading back from Jerez today but he wants to send his very best wishes to Bella Combs. Many of you know Bella, who’s a massive F1 fan, and has often commented on this site and on Twitter. She’s not very well at the moment and Keith would like to wish her all the best and say ‘get well soon’.

In today?óÔé¼Ôäós round up, Bruno Senna gets his first drive in the R31, but rules himself out as a candidate to replace Robert Kubica as race driver.

?óÔé¼?ôBruno Senna: ?óÔé¼?£It was an awesome day – my first chance to drive the R31 and I?óÔé¼Ôäóm pleased with how things went. It was very much a learning day for me. I had never used the adjustable wing or the KERS before, so I had to adapt to these. It?óÔé¼Ôäós not easy at first, because there is a big workload and you are operating two factors that change the balance of the car, but by the end of the day it became more like second nature.

?óÔé¼?ô?óÔé¼?£I started the day pretty relaxed; gradually built up my confidence, and then by lunchtime I was feeling pretty comfortable with things. I was looking forward to doing some hard laps at the end of the day, but with the red flags and the weather, there wasn?óÔé¼Ôäót enough time.?óÔé¼Ôäó?óÔé¼?Ø

?óÔé¼?ôOver three thousand kilometres ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ 3,195.594 to be precise ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ in one week is a sound start to the work of developing the Maranello newborn, the F150th Italia.

?óÔé¼?ôFernando and Felipe will be on track again tomorrow: no, it?óÔé¼Ôäós not an extra day?óÔé¼Ôäós testing granted to Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, but a day dedicated to promotional filming for the Scuderia?óÔé¼Ôäós partners. Development work on the new car will resume on Friday 18 at the Catalunya Circuit, on the outskirts of Barcelona: it will actually be the Spanish driver who will get the session underway, with Felipe taking over from him for Sunday and Monday.?óÔé¼?Ø

?óÔé¼?ôHey guys it’s a chilly day here in Jerez but still getting some useful laps in. Seems like everyone is running big fuel loads this afternoon. Most teams are doing long runs.. interesting to see the tyre degradation from different teams..?óÔé¼?Ø

Happy birthday!

On this day in F1

On this day in 2008, Williams were the toast of testing with a string of quick times. The FW30 was fast on its debut at Valencia and was quicker still at Jerez, with Nico Rosberg ending the test as the fourth-quickest driver.

Bruno seems a nice guy â€“ I hope he will get his chance one day (maybe instead of Petrov?).

No, I think Petrov is too fast to be let go. He reminds me of Massa – very quick, but rough around the edges. I think Heidfeld deserves a drive, but I’d like Senna to be given a proper chance. His HRT failed him in nearly every second race last year, so we’ve not seen the best of him yet. But back to my point; Petrov has proven his worth with several strong performances in 2010, and I think he will have found his feet by the middle of this season.

Well, I honestly think he is capable of driving fast, but he needs a huge amount of time to achieve that. For now, Petrov is in my opinion one of the worst drivers in F1. But not because of lack of talent – I think he just needs the experience. Anyway he doesn’t deserve a place in Lotus-Renault at this moment.

Ditto on the Pet thingy Patrickl. He’d have never gotten or kept that seat with out some serious lolly, and it’s gonna bite Renault very hard of their silly little bottoms when the Manufactures points are tallied at the end of the season.

Nah – looks 100x better with black instead of red, said that since day one of the JPS livery, and I said the same last year with the bee livery, but I can understand Total’s reasons for wanting to stand out! ;)

I’ve been saying it’s a great looking car ruined by the livery. I thought the red was only part of the problem, but having seen this, its most of the problem. The gold is still too thick, but just getting rid of the red is such an improvement.

It looks better with the black. Miles better. Now if only TOTAL could see this but it’s their marketing department that probably rules it out.
They should be thinking:
“This could be an iconic car in F1 that everyone loves and wants to take pictures \ keep models of. Lets change our logo to match.”
Or they are really are thinking:
“Let’s keep the annoying red and then everyone can talk about how TOTAL are the sponsor to ruin that lovely livery.”

I say, that if a sponsor wants to keep it’s corporate colours it should be a major sponsor and colour the whole car. Otherwise it show bow down to keep the car looking more aesthetically pleasing.

All things being equal, I am convinced that Senna does have a future in F1. Hes pretty must spent mst of his teenage years out of any racing car, and he does have the talent. Maybe not WDC or even as good as Montoya, but hes still good enough to be one of the 24.

Bruno Senna is really an unlucky fellow: yesterday, when he was ready to push with the soft and super soft tires, the session was red flagged and started to rain. Would love to see his true pace with those tires. He’s so unlucky that in almost every thread or news post in this site concerning him, discussions tend to go to really strange, off topic places! :)

F1 should have a “soft” budget cap, like the NBA. Basically it means that for every $1 spent over the cap, that team has to give x amount to all the other teams (not sure about the exact details). That way the big teams can spend, but the smaller teams also get some money out of it, allowing them to keep pace. It should include everything except marketing, which has nothing to do with how the race pans out.

It could work, but there is a lot of room for debate as to who would be classified as a “small team”. Red Bull for example, while not a manufacturer team, clearly have resources and are now WCC. I suppose you could base it on the previous season’s performance (eg the teams from 8th downwards get a cut) rather than number of staff or total budget. I also imagine that the teams wouldn’t really want to disclose their total budgets.

Brawn would have been an interesting one because despite winning the WCC they were really starting to run out of cash.

The budget cap was proposed by Honda (Brawn), BMW (Theissen) and Renault (Briatore). They claimed they could not stay in F1 if there was no budgetcap.

They are now gone (because there was no budget cap?), but I think the teams they once sponsored are still in favor of a budgetcap. So are Williams, Red Bull and I’ll bet the 3 new teams. McLaren have never been much against it either.

If someone comes with a sensible budgetcap limit. One that doesn’t need a horrible construct to overrule a single team’s veto. Then it could go down pretty well with all teams apart from Ferrari.

If 70% majority is enough, it could still be voted.
Which teams would be against the budget cap apart from Ferrari, RBR and McLaren? (not even sure if McLaren are really opposed to it)
If none, you have 8 vs 3 or 72% majority.
I wouldn’t mind this kind of rule.

Being the pinnacle of motor racing is not only about building competitive cars, but also about having the very best drivers in them.
If a team like Renault has to hire Petrov and Williams has to ditch the Hulk both only for financial reasons, then something seems to be structurally very wrong.